Imagine that if users in a domain have a UPN suffix which is not a public domain, such as @company.local instead of @company.com. When those users synchronize into Azure AD for EMS, Intune, O365, etc., then the users’ UPNs will be @company.onmicrosoft.com instead of a friendly @company.com UPN for logging into portals or for enrolling devices. This is an instance...

Hi All, Today is a great milestone for me because I just finished writing the ConfigMgr: Automation from Zero to Hero book. It is not under final review and should be available in the next couple of months. I have to thank David Nudelman, Heinrich Pels…

I have made a couple of updates to the Service Manager Discovery report. The first one is that the report will now display the update rollup level within the report along with the version number. This was courtesy of Samuel Erskine and Natascia Heil. Thanks for contributing the the report! They have recently built […]

Earlier this week, Ben Hunter posted an article with a script useful for excluding multi-reboot updates during a ZTI OS deployment. It reminded me of a project I had that was sitting idle and needed to be finished: a Powershell script to automatically create a Software Update Group containing those multi-reboot updates listed in KB2894518 which are known to disrupt ConfigMgr...

I recently built a PowerShell script that creates a discovery report for System Center Service Manager. The idea behind the script was to have something that I could run to gather all of the information I would want about a Service Manager deployment. I searched online and could not find anything so that’s when I […]

Recently a colleague of mine Rob Plank brought some new CMDLets for Service Manager to my attention. These are a part of a PowerShell module that can be installed on your Service Manager server. They are the System Center Service Manager PowerShell Extensions also known as SCSMPx. Here is the official description for them: “The […]

After Brad Anderson’s speech at System Center Universe 2015 about ConfigMgr and MDM, it seemed time to start seriously looking at Intune and MDM. Guides I was following the very in-depth guides below. Thanks Matt, Kenny, Tim, Pierre, and Benoit for the great guides! Matt Hinson – Blog – Setting Up Windows Intune/ConfigMgr 2012 R2 with ADFS On-Prem and Azure Lab...

In part one of this miniseries I explained some principals around using the new class keyword in Windows PowerShell DSC resource modules. If you haven’t read that article yet, go find it here: http://www.david-obrien.net/2015/02/windows-powershell-dsc-classes-introduction-part-1/ This part 2 will concentrate on the enum keyword and the three main functions in each resource class. Enum -erate input One of the most important things in every script (no matter what language) is error handling. PowerShell and DSC is no exception here. For me, part of error handling is also to validate input users can provide your script or application with. Enum is used to implement constant values inside of a variable. A limitation […]

The Windows Management Framework 5 (WMF 5) Technical Preview also brought us PowerShell 5, and with that we got Desired State Configuration v2 (DSC v2). I just made that name up, I don’t believe it’s officially called DSC v2. Anyways, with PowerShell v5 we now got two new keywords, called “class” and “enum”. Developers will instantly recognise these two keywords and will also know what to do with them. I’m an IT Pro, not a developer, I had (have) to learn what to do with them. Follow me on my journey to a more “dev” side of the PowerShell world than I was ever used to. PSDSC and classes With […]

I recently was helping a client that needed to activate over 20+ servers after an OS upgrade. I did not want to do this one by one and they did not have a KMS. PowerShell to the rescue. I was able to put together a script that loops through an OU in Active Directory and […]

ConfigMgr & PowerShell automation While being in Oslo for NicConf I had the pleasure to do a talk on “ConfigMgr and PowerShell – How to automate tasks in ConfigMgr” at a local Oslo Microsoft User Group. Even though the audience was quite small (10 attendees?), I enjoyed speaking there. It was more interactive than I expected, which was great. As promised, here are my slides (not many, I know, I’m not a Powerpoint guy): Here are some of the commands I used, run them in your test environment and on the ConfigMgr server: Enjoy, David

If you’ve been to my session on PowerShell Desired State Configuration and are interested in the slides, well, here you go. PowerShell DSC resources The session description: What is Powershell Desired State Configuration and how can you become the captain of that spaceship which is your IT environment? How hard is it really to create your own custom DSC Resource? Follow me on a journey where only the bold have gone before and realised, it wasn’t that hard after all. Download:

Silver Sponsors

Download all the System Center 2012 bits!

Bronze Sponsors

If the Surface 3 and Surface 2 are third cousins then the Surface Pro 3 is the big brother to the Surface 3 with the Surface Pro 3 being a little faster and a little bigger in all specifications. read more […]

While the Surface 3 follows the naming scheme of the Surface 2 it is not a follow on in the Surface 2 product line. This is an entirely new product with better capabilities, hardware and functionality but a few steps below the Surface Pro 3 itself. The Surface 2 and Surface 3 are like third cousins. They come with the same familial connection but are very di […]

Well ask and you shall receive. Windows insiders became quite vocal during the 54 day drought of no new Windows 10 Technical Preview builds between 23 January and 18 March. In return Microsoft listened and said they were reevaluating how they use the Fast Ring for updated builds and that effort showed up yesterday afternoon. read more […]

To enable the data-driven enterprise, IT organizations are moving rapidly to a services-based cloud model. This white paper highlights the challenges of controlling data in hybrid as-a-service IT environments and suggests that data control in hybrid IT should be looked at as a framework rather than as a single effort. read more […]

Just like you can create policies for users, you can create policies for phones In a Lync Enterprise Voice deployment, you need to protect the phones being used by multiple users or the public. read more […]

Hello, I am looking for SCCM 2012 report which shows disk space used by all folders under C:\ or D:\ drive and excludes C:\windows, C:\program files and C:\program files (x86) folders. Is there any custom mof available so I can add/import in […]

I need help scripting on 64bit OS.. I am using SMS Installer but need help executing or navigating to the 64bit side of the windows OS? Also is there any scripting software that supports both 32bit and 64bit scripting compiling .exe? […]

Hello everyone, I'm facing a frustrating issue that is slowing progress moving forward with SCCM 2012 R2 CU4 in my environment because I can't get systems to patch consistently. I have a small environment with a single physical site server and loc […]

I have a few device collections full of servers that have already received clients. I wanted to know if there is a way to change the settings in software center for all devices in a device collection vs having to remote into each server and do it manuall […]